Nokia has begun rolling out its 41mp Pureview smartphone to select markets, but it is doubtful whether it will reverse the company’s struggles.
Nokia’s much hyped cameraphone, the Pureview 808 is to be released this month to Russian and Indian markets. Further release dates and locations have not been confirmed.
The device has been targeted at photography enthusiasts, and utilises a 41 megapixel sensor (38mp effective) Carl Zeiss optics, and Nokia’s new ‘pixel oversampling’ technology. It merges seven pixels of information into one pixel, which Nokia claims makes for sharp images. These images can then be captured and digitally zoomed and edited (in phone) without loss of clarity.
Nokia claims this ‘makes it possible for anyone to capture professional looking images in any conditions,’ including ‘superior low-light performance’ – CBR is sceptical (read CBRs blog here).
The device has a 4-inch screen at 360 x 640 pixels. It has a microSD slot, with capacity up to 32Gb, as well as 16GB of internal storage. It has a 1.3GHz ARM 11 processor with 512 MB RAM. Strangely, the device’s OS remains tied to Nokia’s nearly defunct Symbian platform (Belle), which Nokia CEO Steven Elop previously described as a ‘burning platform‘ last year. This means the product’s eco-system will remain limited.
Nokia’s other new products, in the Lumia smartphone line, have used Windows Phone 7.5 Mango in a partnership with Microsoft. Its Lumia range has sold 3 million since the Lumia 800’s launch in November (see CBRs review here). This remains a drop in the water compared to Apple’s 37 million iPhones over the same period. The Lumia’s lacklustre sales caused the company’s head of sales to resign. Microsoft’s Windows Phone President was removed late last year.
Nokia has suffered in the face of Google Android and Apple domination of the smartphone market. Nokia’s year end results two weeks ago showed a revenue fall of 29% year on year, from €10.4b this time last year to just €7.4b. It has effectively issued a profit warning for the next two quarters.
